How Facebook has been exploited to stir the anger of French protesters

Adam Sage, Paris

Thursday December 06 2018, 5.00pm, The Times

Lenin would have been surprised by the yellow-vest movement. He thought that revolutions occurred when a determined vanguard led the proletarian masses to overthrow a regime, but that was before Facebook.

What we are witnessing in France is an affront to Marxism-Leninism, with a grassroots uprising spreading uncontrolled in whatever direction takes its fancy as the professional agitators scramble to keep up.

The movement emerged from Facebook groups set up in recent months all over France to express anger with rising taxes, notably on fuel, and falling living standards. The groups spread online quickly and when some of the people on them suggested staging demonstrations in support of their cause, they proved to be a formidable weapon. They have enabled protesters to organise themselves quickly,